Severe Anxiety

Haha no, Max, I'm not saying you're supposed to be calm and rational and patient -- I'm saying you're supposed to feel pathetic and anxious and hopeless, but if it makes you feel any better (and it shouldn't) chances are you will gradually become comfortable with whatever it is you wind up doing, and shortly after that you may realize that you've gotten somewhere without even noticing it.

Also here's an amazing tip that has really, really helped me whenever any of my friends sell novels for large sums of money. Ask yourself: have you actually written a novel? And if the answer is "no," one awesome solution is to do that, and then try to sell it for a large amount of money.

slate article is interesting. lately i've just been feeling like, really, what is the point of even trying hard to make plans and save $$$ because i'll be paying student loans another 10 years, DC is expensive, and i actually really like my job but the salary is just not great & don't expect much on that horizon or opportunities to advance that don't require doing a job I don't like, or leaving a great organization. a lot of college friends of mine (don't know how else to describe, known them for ages but we're not that close) saved money and bought places and are all responsible and stuff.. i dunno. also i hate talking about money, house prices, and career opportunities but that's so much of what a lot of people in DC seem to talk about. ugh

problems w/ writing a novel include severe anxiety abt my writing talent, severe anxiety abt the things i wd like to say, severe anxiety abt the state of the publishing industry

maybe i will go home and write a series of interconnected vignettes centered around the closing of a beloved restaurant/record store/bookstore/blog

ENJOYED BEING 18 BECAUSE ITS BASICALLY ALL DOWNHILL FROM THERE

Do exactly what you said, enjoy being eighteen!

I didn’t realise how shit everything was until I was in my 30’s, so shut up, stop being mard and enjoy til you’re old enough for it to matter.

*shakes head at youth of today*

france stressed me, it's not like parisians are open and welcoming, though i learned not to take it personal or consider it rudeness either. though on some levels the language barrier did me a favor, because i started to challenge the assumption i (unconsciously) had that a lot of situations are my problem & up to me to smooth things over and play along and be nice - actually no, it's your problem, you don't really have the right to take up my time or attention just because.

lol im not 18 btw i didnt enjoy being 18

a tale of two twitties

beloved community blog

xp

max if you look on it more as a craft that you have to practice, not a function of talent wherein you'll immediately have to prove whether or not you have it?

it could always be worse. that's pretty annoying advice though actually.

lol im not 18 btw i didnt enjoy being 18

see you're laughing already :)

(xpost to nabisco, daria) I think a lot of the anxiety about the 20s comes from seeing your friends who do seem to be doing really well, with good jobs and savings and just a level of security and accomplishment that you don't have. It's easy to blame the economy until you look at people your age who look like they just...got it right. (Full disclosure: I'm currently working part time jobs because I can't find a single full time job, and in the fall I'm going to graduate school, so I'm going to put off getting a "real job" until I'm around THIRTY.)

also max, about writing - i do think it is rewarding to work on things as hobbies that you might not be good at. i'm not a terribly artistic type myself, but running and cooking are like that for me, although i doubt i'd ever win a race or open a restaurant or anything like that.

yeah, something that's helped me with music lately is realizing that it's about making a decision about how you live your life (ie deciding it's something i'm always going to do) rather than worrying about what i haven't accomplished yet.

which i guess is just a version of "it's not the destination it's the journey"-style platitudes, but still.

maybe i will go home and write a series of interconnected vignettes centered around the closing of a beloved restaurant/record store/bookstore/blog

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Thursday, March 26, 2009 6:10 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i am actually considering doing this btw, that thread made me think abt how much i <3 that format

ya guys u r all right. its helpful to put it out on the internet sometimes to make u feel better.

lyfe, u know

Aw, Max, you're going to get me sounding like my mom in here, but:

"anxiety abt my writing talent" = one good way to settle that is to write a novel and see if it's good
"severe anxiety abt the things i wd like to say" = one good way to settle that is to say something and see how it sounds
"severe anxiety abt the state of the publishing industry" = one good way to settle that is to publish a novel and see what happens

Seriously, if there were anything I would do differently about my early/mid 20s, it's ... well, I spent a lot of time on anxieties like those instead of just doing stuff -- stuff that, even if it turned out lame or embarrassing, would at least be stuff I had done and gotten better at and learned about. I don't mean that in any big profound regretful way. I just mean I'd rather have a crappy juvenile novel I wrote when I was 23 than not. I'd rather have played in someone's horrible ska band than not. This like the non-concise version of the Woody Allen "80% of life is just showing up" thing -- might as well do the shit, and if it sucks, by the time you hit 30 that'll actually just be hilarious and a fun story.

(NB I am like 31, if that has any bearing on the above advice.)

xpost - Maria, that is absolutely true -- I remember getting hit with a huge dose of that immediately post-college, when your "equal" peers suddenly turn over strikingly non-equal -- but that never ends, you just get over it; the difference in entrenched life turnouts is only higher when you're 30, and surely higher than that when you're 50

well its not my 1st choice (which is still getting into one of the med schools im waitlisted at) but ive already got friends in france + speak some french so im not really anxious about living there.

Also here's an amazing tip that has really, really helped me whenever any of my friends sell novels for large sums of money. Ask yourself: have you actually written a novel? And if the answer is "no," one awesome solution is to do that, and then try to sell it for a large amount of money.

this is a good point and im happy you made it but... its hard. at least for me even once youve made something selling it can be such a dispiriting process in itself and even the small success ive had w/shit ive made, ive never really stopped thinking (knowing?) that im not smart or creative or interesting or that ive never had a decent idea in my lyfe...

xp - maria - true that. oh well! what does concern me most is, wondering if my brain is just irreversibly wired to be anxious and easily stressed out.

BASICALLY (hopefully this is the short version) I think it's easy to spend a few years looking for like the perfect opportunity, that one strike that will make everything great -- in actuality most people only appear to have a strike, and in fact the "strike" was preceded by years of just trying to do something, not necessarily succeeding, and just generally being out doing the thing they care about in a way that put them in position to find and jump on the strike opportunity when it came along

for the record I am horrible at taking this advice, but I know it to be true

w/r/t that article:

I almost feel weirdly thankful to be aimless at this age, at this point in time in history because *nobody* expects early-20 year olds to be able to find a good job. I have a sorta aimless personality to begin with and even if the economy was great I'm not sure if my situation would be significantly different. At the very least there's a very acceptable excuse right now.

thanks for the advice nabisco, seriously, it makes sense, and frankly you seem like a dude who has it figured out in a lot of ways, which i mean as a compliment

and i know it to be true because its been true for me w/r/t to a bunch of opportunities in the past

writing for shitty arts mags for free seems stupid and lame but hey u turn around and youve actually become an ok writer and you have a solid body of clips and next thing you know youre the ceo of vanity fair

lol or so we all hope

xpost - hahaha, Lamp, the way that particular advice occurred to me was when a friend got a novel reviewed in the New Yorker, and I was like "geez, I wish I could get a novel reviewed in the New Yorker," and the blindingly obvious solution was: well you'd better pick up the pace finishing one, then, cause writing it is kind of a key step here

^^ sadly, Max, that "you have to do stuff before people can shower you with praise and riches for it" is all I have figured out thus far

the "strike" was preceded by years of just trying to do something, not necessarily succeeding, and just generally being out doing the thing they care about

word

but hey nabisco its a pretty good thing to have figured out!

wolcott @ vanity fair went to the mediocre state university in the region where i grew up, the place i despised the prospect of attending & basically having four more years of high school w/people i never wanted to see again. (i didn't go there.) also he dropped out. then he became kind of an ok writer..

oh xpost makes it pointless but: yah, nabs that is still really good advice

one thing that did really help me and its def a f(n) of my personality but getting a chance to work on creative projects *with* other ppl really helped - ive been 10x more productive w/r/t to my work since i started making games w/other ppl and that feeling of accomplishment really bled into more solitary things

dont know if that really works for writing novels but for scrnwriting it could

I think the thing I find in my 20s is the sense that you've sort of missed chances or wasted opportunities gets very strong, even when there are good things ahead. It's like for the first time in your life there is enough past to weigh on the present and the future, and trying to cope with this is sort of hard. I also find personally that the relative humility that comes with being in my 20s, while possibly making me a more considerate person, also fills me with doubt and a lack of confidence, or makes me more inclined to blame myself if something goes wrong.

Then I think "I shouldn't blame myself though should I? Maybe it's not my fault." Then I think "but sometimes it is my fault". I never know when to blame myself or not, and sometimes I feel I know I let myself off the hook too easily...

20s are so weird, that bulletproof teenage feeling is amazing, I wish I didn't use it to go and get fucked on drugs every week!

x-post it is so true that opportunities come along randomly tho. but also you know, you can never be sure what you want will be as good as you think either. this time last year I thought I had it completely fucking made, I was in a five star hotel for a month, being trained by a world renowned company. I thought "every mistake I made until now doesn't fucking matter cos here I am". Turns out the actual job was shit....so I guess the point I'm making is that it's hard to predict what "making it" is for you...

this year is going well too tho. I'm on the couch and there is a punnet of strawberries in the fridge.

a lot of the musicians i went to college with have been good at that stubborn persistence thing. some are really, really successful and some are less so (or at least less obviously successful), but everyone who stuck with it has come a long, long way since 10 years ago. and obviously the people who gave it up, uh, didn't.

i def regret not taking the opportunity to be involved in creative projects back in college, now i'm just not in an environment where that is easy even though i certainly know a few creative people - but feel like i wasted the time when i ought to have developed skills at something instead of just.. worrying all the damn time & spending ages on critical essays for class. seemed like a good path at the time but years later, wow, maybe i've returned to having some kind of romantic/purist bias against doing criticism & wish i had been writing short stories.

this year is going well too tho. I'm on the couch and there is a punnet of strawberries in the fridge.

― Local Garda, Friday, March 27, 2009 8:32 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

<3 that's the secret, i think, try to stay in the moment and have a bit of gratitude. and happy birthday for the other day, i meant to post on your thread but i forgot.

me too! my creative writing at the time would have been terrible (probably still would be, but at least now i have a much more developed sense of the parts of my writing that i hate), but still.

xp

xpthanks a lot! was a nice day. yep I think you're right. I constantly fret over the future but the present is mostly pretty good.

Creative projects, non-creative projects -- I dunno, Daria, so long as you were doing something, right?

xpost

yes, happy belated birthday, ronan! i'm glad it was nice.

i read the other day that if you ask someone right after they've done something, they'll say they regret not being conservative and cautious enough in how they spent money or time, but if you ask years later, they'll regret not having more fun. we may be feeling some of both of those effects now.

This whole line of advice may be particular to my experience, because I'm definitely the kind of person who'd normally be in danger of just coasting along doing whatever's in front of me forever -- but I'd guess that's not super-rare among ILX0rs.

or most people, i think.

weird for this thread to bump today...today of all days i'm feeling more optimistic and happy about my life than i have done in a VERY long time...employed, about to join a band (fingers crossed) and on the cusp of, yes, embarking on BIG SERIOUS writing endeavours

tell you what, max, we'll make an ILX novelists' club...we have to have written a certain number of words by a certain time to remain in the club, it will be a massively groovy challenge

something i said on ronan's b-day thread is that this year has had SUCH a wretched start that we are able to attack the rest of it as ppl with something to prove, something to gain, and i personally believe 2009 will respond positively to this

i.e. it's gonna be a GREAT YEAR

also srsly let's all get on board for this novelists' club thing for real i'm psyched

the worst is coasting along but also giving yourself shit about it! xp

xp - nabisco - sure,i was doing something. i got to be pretty adept at taking apart literature & finding interesting things to say about it, probably i am not too shabby at film criticism either (though would have to refresh my vocab, it's been a few years). and yet philosophically i feel like it's not what i would like to be doing. perhaps should reconsider that. and by 'criticism' at this point i certainly mean finding ways to explain why a particular work is interesting, not passing judgment - either it's interesting or not, and if not, don't bother.

or most people, i think.

yeah but most people are probably less (formally) educated than the average ilxor, which adds another level of obligation to your life. my roommates are in their late 20s and have no education or real future, but they never seem particularly stressed about it. whereas my college friends, even the ones who are objectively in much better situations, are very stressed.

at 29, i am finally coming to terms with career anxiety. seeing a lot of my friends doing really well, doing amazing things, was really bumming me out cuz i felt like i had zero skills/knowledge/talent. stuck in retail/hospitality, i was freaking out that this was the rest of my life and it was just a miserable thought, but recently i've accepted that yes, i probably will spend my working life in retail, but hey i can actually manage a store and earn some not-awful money, and it's something i'm pretty decent at doing. it sucks, indeed, but the fact is that someone has to do it - not everyone gets to be the talented painter or the original and striking novelist. part of what helped me in accepting this as my 'fate' was finding an artsy thing i love doing and am a little bit good at; it's not something i could go into full time in the foreseeable future, but it's satisfying and i can make a little money at it eventually.

also ronan completely otm

ok i am having a status anxiety moment over a guy i am "friends" with on facebook (dc networky type who happened to be watching monday night football at the same bar, thus is now "friends" with everyone there who were all druuuunk). so i am like, jealous of a republican and a cowboys fan! also v debonair, polite, good looking, and knows barack obama, and throwing a party at his v swank and spacious apartment to which i could theoretically RSVP being a "friend" on facebook, but, surely wouldn't know anyone & would feel totally out of place. sure, that stuff isn't really what matters in life and blah blah blah but it's like daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn.

if you were to go and be observant and then write a full report for us i am pretty sure i would rather read that than most new novels reviewed by the new yorker.